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Joe Biden Will Not Run for President in 2016

Vice President Joe Biden Wednesday ended months of speculation over a possible run for the 2016 Democratic nomination, and announced he would not be running for president this election cycle.
Photo by Carolyn Kaster/AP

Vice President Joe Biden Wednesday ended months of speculation over a possible run for the 2016 Democratic nomination, and announced he would not be running for president this election cycle.

During a press conference at the White House Rose Garden, Biden said that he had determined he had run "out of time" to mount a successful campaign.

"As my family and I have worked through the grieving process, I've said all along what I've said time and again to others, that it may very well be that that process, by the time we get through it, closes the window on mounting a realistic campaign for president," Biden said. "I've concluded it has closed."

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In recent weeks, speculation over a potential Biden run had grown rapidly as a breadcrumb trail of hints left in the media indicated to many he would throw his hat in the ring for 2016. This included an interview published in the New York Times in June, in which he hinted to columnist Maureen Dowd that his late son had urged his father to run for president on his deathbed, and a much-lauded appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in September

In August, Biden said he was still deciding whether he had the "emotional fuel" to run after the death of his son, Beau Biden, from brain cancer on May 30. The shock announcement Wednesday was disappointing to supporters and loyalists who had urged the vice president to run.

Already a handful of Congress members had indicated their support for Biden, while more than 50 donors pledged, through the Draft Biden PAC, to furnish his war chest ahead of his candidacy declaration.

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The Draft Biden PAC released a statement shortly after Biden's announcement Wednesday.

"We are so grateful for the gigantic outpouring of support from hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country in our effort to encourage the Vice President to run," Will Pierce, Executive Director of Draft Biden 2016 said in the statement. "While the Vice President has decided not to run, we know that over the next year he will stand up for all Americans and articulate a vision for America's future that will leave no one behind."

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The vice president has twice before run for the role of commander-in-chief. Biden's first shot at president in the 1988 race came to an early end when the then 45-year-old dropped out three months after announcing in the face of allegations he plagiarized a speech during his first year at Syracuse law school. His second campaign in 2008 ended after he polled poorly in the Iowa caucus.

At this late stage, a presidential run for Biden would have faced the mammoth task of quickly setting up the infrastructure and assembling (or poaching) staff. Even more difficult would have been fundraising; Clinton and Sanders have raised $28 million and $26 million for their campaigns this quarter alone, respectively, not to mention the millions of dollars that super PACs have bundled for Clinton or the contributions that GOP candidates have received.

Biden's announcement Wednesday solidifies former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's position as frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Despite a dip in Clinton's popularity over the summer when her campaign was hit with attacks over her use of a private email server and over the ongoing Benghazi committee investigation, she has since rebounded in the polls, particularly after a bold performance in the first Democratic debate last week.

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Clinton currently leads the field with 54 percent of support from primary voters, followed by Bernie Sanders' 23 percent and Biden's 16 percent, according to a Tuesday ABC/Washington Post poll.

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"If [Biden] had gotten in a few months ago, he might have had an easier time when Hillary was having a rough summer, when there were a lot of nervous democratic donors and establishment-types who were worried her campaign was going to fall apart," said Executive Director of Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service, Mo Elleithee, who was also a senior spokesperson for Clinton during her run for the Democratic nomination in 2008.

On Wednesday, Biden took advantage of the press conference to warn against undoing the "Obama legacy."

"The American people have worked too hard and we've come too far for that," he said.

Instead, he urged his fellow Democrats to run their campaigns based on the path the president has taken in the White House over the last two terms, calling them to focus on battling inequality and expanding college education, among other things. He also reiterated a statement he had made several times in recent days that Republicans are "not our enemy."

"While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent," he said.

Shortly after the announcement Wednesday, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that Biden "was the most formidable general election candidate the Democrat Party could have fielded," and that his decision not to run "greatly improves our chances of taking back the White House."

Follow Liz Fields on Twitter: @lianzifields

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